Saturday, July 26, 2008

Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will serve before kings; he will not serve before obscure men. -- Proverbs 22:29We had a challenge with regard to the wheels on Eliot's Meteor. It took us a long time to find a rear wheel with sufficient backspacing to tuck under the rear quarter. It turns out that 2005+ Mustang GT wheels are a match.

But ... those are 17"x8" wheels - fine for the rear, but too wide for the front!We needed minimum diameter of 17" on the front, to clear the Cobra calipers, but 8" is just too wide for the front of the Meteor. We'd rub the inside edge of the tires when turning.

But we wanted matching wheels, if possible. This is when Weldcraft Wheels came to the rescue. They were able, through some very tricky and skilled welding, to narrow our extra set of Mustang GT wheels by 2" ... and it was not easy! The difficulty came because of the large taper (slant) to the inside profile of the wheels. Sure, it is relatively easy to cut 2" out of the middle of the wheel somewhere, but then the two diameters would not match. James, the welder at Weldcraft, did amazing work in building up the inner and outer edges, and then laying down a massive weld bead which joined the two wheel halves ... all while guaranteeing that the wheel runs straight and true.

Here is the work of James, who (obviously) ROCKS!

And this 5-spoked beauty is one of the final 17"x6" wheels which we picked up from Weldcraft (Plymouth, Michigan) just a few days ago!